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About me

I work at Halogen, a consultancy that helps companies to get the most out of the web. My colleagues are specialists on

web design

intranets

visual problem solving

So, what is ‘visual problem solving’? It is a way of working that designers are familiar with, while the rest of normally aren’t. We make up scenarios about how for instance an organisational change or a new CRM system may hit the the employees or the end users. Halogen’s people decision makers as well as the ‘doers’ understand and influence the change that is going to hit them. Believe it or not, it works impressively well.

My particular take on this is to keep an eye on how our clients can allign intranets with their business goals and corporate culture. The best thing I know is to facilitate processes and activities for people and organisational development. That’s kind of less intranettish and more of HR related.

Previously I have worked at Telenor Group, a telecom company with its head quarter in Oslo, Norway. I designed and delivered leadership development initiatives within the company.

I have done similar things at Schibsted, a European media group. I’ve also been fighting tobacco and promoted gender equality in my early years after university.

Thank you for your interest in how to create a successful international team. You are about to mount an incredibly interesting task. Here are a few suggestions on how to move forward.

1. Build on your reflections: Keep in mind that your own experience from being the only foreigner in your company is a fountain of insight and reflection. Use your own reflections as a starting point for issues important to keep in mind when recruiting new forreigners. What have been your reactions on the way your local colleagues make decisions, negotiate a deal, cooperate with their bosses, share information with colleagues, etc?

2. Apply models with care: Take a brief look at Geert Hofstede’s framework for cross-cultural communication. He is a Dutch cross-cultural management consultant. Wikipedia’s presentation of him provides a decent starting point for his thoughts. Please note that his framework has some serious flaws: his research was carried out in the 70s. His sources of information were male ingeneers (he ‘forgot’ about the significance of gender, not to mention ethnicity). In addition nobody had heard of things like the internet, mobile phones or cheap flights at that time and tjeir immense influence on human communication. In other words: the world has changed dramatically since Hofstede did his research. His theories have not. Beware.

3. Check out team work literature: Read the article ‘Eight ways to build collaborative teams’. It deals head-on with challenges international teams will face. The full length article is worth every cent of its price (6,50 US dollars) at Harvard Business Online.